23.10.17

While speaking in an exclusive interview with Sunday Vanguard, the
Controller of Prisons in Lagos State, Tunde Ladipo, disclosed that high
profile inmates, including the kidnap kingpin currently held in Kirikiri
Prisons, Chukwudidumeme Onuamadike, popularly known as Evans, have no
special treatment.

He said; “We have laws rules and regulations that guide them.
Evans is like every other inmate in the prison. There is nothing
special about him. It is just that there is so much hype about him being
a suspected kidnapper. As far as I am concerned, he is an ordinary
inmate. So far, so good.

"There is no way he can even go above the law because he can’t
have that chance. We have ensured that our prisons are secure. So there
is no cause for alarm. In the cases of inmates making use of telephone
and other facilities, I assure you that if any case like that comes up
and we investigate and find it to be true, we will not hesitate to take
positive action. For now, I assure you that we don’t have such thing in
our prisons”.

The controller also spoke on how some prisons in the state were decongested.

He said: “In concrete terms, we have been lucky that the
former Chief Judge of Lagos State came to our rescue when we had
problems in Badagry Prisons. She visited all the prisons because I had
to disturb her to come to our aid by visiting the prisons and, in the
process of going round, she was able to release quite a number of
inmates. In Badagry Prisons, she released 80 inmates, Ikoyi 44,
Kirikiri Medium 117 and Kirikiri female 13.

"The Minister of Justice has also been very much concerned
about the congestion of prisons in Lagos. I and stakeholders met
on one or two occasions to look at the way forward. I have been
appealing to well-meaning Nigerians to help us pay the fines of inmates
who cannot afford to pay those fines.

"And many Nigerians are coming to help. In particular, a
philanthropist who wanted to feed inmates came to my office and I told
him that our major headache is the decongestion of our prisons. I
pleaded that he should help us pay fines for inmates who could not
afford it. Luckily, he was able to release 200 of such prisoners from
the medium prison in Kirikiri”.